INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY: A MONOPOLY POWER

Too many people think that copyrights and patents are good. What they forget is that copyrights and patents are monopoly powers, and monopolies are never good.

How copyrights, patents, and exclusive contracts are monopolies:

1. The holder of a copyright or a patent can control who can produce a product.
2. The holder can keep the product off the market. Someone can buy the copyright or patent to remove the product from the market.
3. The holder can prevent competition by not licensing competitors.
4. The holder can demand that products that use a product without the holder's product sold to use it must be removed from the market.
5. The holder can control the price of the product by limiting production.
6. The holder can control all copies, limiting the product to rental use.
7. If the holder controls all copies, the holder can hoard those copies until their rental value increases.
8. If the holder controls all copies, the holder can permanently destroy the work, removing it from posterity.
9. The holder can make so much money from the works that he no longer has to work for a living. He is no longer a productive member of society.
10. Exclusive contracts are monopoly powers over the parties of the contracts.

Examples of the harm caused by these monopoly powers:

1. College textbooks cost much more, because the class requires a specific book, which has only one source.
2. Publishers of college textbooks make a new edition every year, so books can't be sold and reused by other students.
3. A plumbing product manufacturer bought out a competitor to remove the competing product from the market. They also removed spare parts for repairing existing units, so people who already have the products can't fix them.
4. Movie companies stop producing home copies of a movie, so they can charge more for them at a later date.
5. A certain Bugs Bunny cartoon will never be seen again. They locked all copies in a vault to increase the rental value years later. But when they opened the vault, they found that the films had disintegrated. No copies survived.
6. All copies of a movie were destroyed, because one of the owners of copyrighted material in the film later objected to its use in the film, removed permission for its use, and ordered all copies destroyed.
7. All home copies of a movie were made with different background music because the holder of the copyright did not want copies of the music sold to the public.
8. Once a work goes out of print, it becomes very hard to obtain a legal copy.
9. Discontinued software can't be bought legally, but it is also illegal to make a copy, so nobody who needs it can get it.
10. Software with a useful life of 3 to 6 years gets a copyright for 95 years.
11. The entertainment products copyright was originally intended to protect are a drain on the economy, because they use up wealth instead of creating more with useful products.
12. Because patents and copyrights can be sold, they do not protect individuals the way the government intended. Most of them end up in the hands of giant corporations.
13. Publishers refuse to publish a work without obtaining ownership of the copyright. This is wrong.
14. Manufacturers refuse to produce a product without obtaining ownership of the patent. This is wrong.
15. One of the best home computers ever made was forced off the market because a third party figured out and manufactured a simple adaptor that let the computer play video games made one of the big video game companies (see case study of the wrong use of intellectual property below).
16. The holder of a copyright or patent can become a celebrity because of the works. Royalty is supposed to be unconstitutional in this country.
17. Exclusive contracts keep people from making money on their work if the manufacturer keeps it off the market.

The correct way to protect intellectual property without going overboard:

• The term for a copyright or patent must be no longer than ten years. No exceptions!

  This is long enough to recoup any investment on the work and make a profit, but not the objectionable lifetime income that removes the creator of the work from doing productive work in the marketplace.

  Treaties with other countries must not extend the lengths of protection to match the exorbitant periods the other countries provide.

• The term for a trademark should last for the duration of its use in the trade.
• The creator of the work retains credit for the actual creation of the work itself in perpetuity. This should be called the creation mark.

  This means that the creator of the work must be given referential credit whenever the work is used, whether or not the patent or copyright has expired.

• All copyrights and patents must have compulsory licensing at mechanical rates.

  Compulsory licensing, now used for executing live or recorded performances of copyrighted musical scores and stage plays, would be required for all protected works of intellectual property. This removes the monopoly powers from the copyrights and patents by allowing others to produce the protected work by paying small royalties.

  In the case of works intended to be one-of-a-kind items not for sale (such as works of art), the word "copy" must be placed on each copy in an inconspicuous place.

• All textbooks used by schools and colleges must be sourced by multiple publishers at mechanical royalty rates.

  The multiple sourcing of the same textbooks by multiple publishers removes the monopoly power that forces the prices to be too high for students to afford. In addition, revisions and new editions must not preclude students from using older versions in the classroom.

  Software intended for use with the book (e.g. grading software) shall not have a separate fee or a fee greater than 10% of the price of the book.

• No copyright or patent may be sold. The original creators of works or their heirs must own them.

  The sale of a patent or copyright means that those with money can buy monopoly power. This is wrongdoing, and must be eliminated.

• Businesses must never own intellectual property unless they created it.

  The person or people who actually created the work must be the owners, not any business hiring others to create the work.

  This prevents businesses from buying up patents and copyrights to amass monopoly powers.

• When several people together create a work, each person shall own his own copyright or patent covering the actual work done by that person to create it.

  This prevents the fights for control over patents and copyrights that often ensue when collaborating groups break up. Royalties shall be divided according to portion of ownership.

• The Office of Patents and Copyrights must keep track of all intellectual property that enters or is placed in the public domain, to keep others from later claiming patents or copyrights on them.
• If anything is created using any kind of funding from any government:
  1. It must not be intellectual property.
  2. It must not be copyrighted or patented.
  3. It must be placed in the public domain immediately.

  This prevents people from obtaining government grants to create a work, and then making a profit from the government expenditures.

• Exclusive contracts must be prohibited as monopoly powers.

  If the beneficiary of the exclusive contract chooses to not use the subject of the contract, the other party is wrongly kept from selling it to someone else. This is a monopoly power, and must be prohibited.

• Noncompete agreements must be prohibited as monopoly powers.

  A noncompete agreement prevents the person leaving the business from using his skills for income. This is a monopoly power and must be prohibited.

• If any of the following happen:
  1. A patent or copyright is used to create or enforce a monopoly situation.
  2. The owner of the patent or copyright acts to remove a product from the market.
  3. A product is discontinued and removed from the market by the copyright owner.
  Then the copyright or patent protection involved must end immediately and the work must be placed in the public domain.

  This prevents monopoly situations, and prevents the patent or copyright from outlasting the product it was intended for. People should have the right to obtain a discontinued product after the manufacturer wants to have nothing more to do with it.

• The royalties from a single patent or copyright must not be so large that the owner can live on them without having to work.

  The mechanical royalty rate must be used, so the holder of the patent or copyright can make a profit, but also so that there is no lifetime income or lifetime savings that removes the creator of the work from doing productive work.

• Royalties must not be charged unless the copies made are sold to others.

  Royalties must not be charged when someone makes one copy of a work for his own private use.

  Since no money is made from making one copy of the work, and since the expense of collecting a mechanical royalty for one copy exceeds the amount of the royalty itself, it must not be collected.

  Copies made from broadcasts or web sites must not be subject to royalties unless they are sold.

  Copies made from out-of-print works must not be subject to royalties unless they are sold.

  Art students making copies of great works of art as practice should likewise not be charged royalties unless the copies are sold.

• Products that are not intended for use for copyright or patent infringement, but which can possibly be used for infringement, must not be taken off the market for that reason.

  Illegitimate uses must not supersede the legitimate uses of such a product, in the same way that tools often used for burglary also have legal uses that prevent them from being banned from the open market.

• Copyright protection for a particular version of a work must end when the next version of the same work is released, unless the only changes the new version contains are corrections of errors found in the previous version.

  Upgrades are not corrections of previous versions.

  This prevents the monopoly situation that occurs when a manufacturer uses its copyrights to charge high prices.

• Software must not be patented. Copyright protection for a particular version of software must end when that particular version of the software is discontinued.

  This prevents the monopoly situation that occurs when a manufacturer uses its copyrights to charge high prices. It also protects people with software they need that won't work when a newer version of some other software is installed (such as an operating system).

• Copy protection, if used to prevent the copying of copyrighted material, must not prevent the individual from making one copy for personal use, must not prevent making backup copies, and must stop protecting the material when the copyright ends.

  This prevents the monopoly situation that occurs when a manufacturer uses its copyrights to charge high prices, and also the case where the copy protection outlasts the copyright.

• Once the manufacturer stops supporting any product, that product must enter the public domain and all forms of copy protection must be disabled.

  This prevents the monopoly situation that occurs when a manufacturer uses its copyrights to charge high prices, and also the case where the copy protection outlasts the copyright.

  The manufacturer must not do anything to break the discontinued product so it no longer works.

  Absence of the manufacturer or its website must not cause the product to stop working or prevent reinstalling it after a failure.

• Copyright and patent infringement must not be crimes. The owner must sue for royalties, and must not have the power to do anything except collect royalties.

  It is not government's place to stop patent and copyright and patent infringements. This is the purpose of the civil courts. If repeated infringement occurs, the judge can award double or treble damages.

  Part of the problem is that government made copyrights and patents too lucrative and last too long, forcing people to violate the patent or copyright to obtain a needed item long after it has been discontinued.

  Government must never confiscate or destroy products that violate patents or copyrights. The only recourse a patent or copyright holder has is collecting royalties.

  Products that are already in the public domain in the country of origin shall not be prohibited from entering a country where they are still under patent or copyright protection. The importer must collect the mechanical royalty from customers.

• Government must stop worshiping economically nonproductive celebrities and giving them special rights others do not have.

  This is nothing but the government favoring the rich at the expense of the rest of us. This is a major reason that copyright and patent infringement must not be crimes.

Case Study of the Wrong Use of Intellectual Property Law

Here are the events in the order they occurred:

1. Before 1978, software was not copyrightable. People passed software around because the computers were the expensive part of computing.
2. Motorola developed the 6809 microprocessor and a set of related integrated circuits (6847, 6883) intended to create a computer system to be included in home computers and embedded computers. Anyone who wanted to use it could buy these chips and build the computer.
3. Many companies bought the 6809 and its chipset and built computers and embedded systems from them. Among the companies selling computers were Southwest Technical Products Company (SWTPC), Tandy (Radio Shack), Aamber, Dragon Data, ENER, Thompson, Vectrex, and others. It was also used in many arcade games and even Eagle traffic signal controllers.
4. Several different operating were created for the 6809, including Color Disk Basic for the Radio Shack TRS-80 Color Computer, Flex (based on CP/M). OS-9 (based on UNIX), and others.
5. The Tandy TRS-80 Color Computer was the most widely sold computer with the 6809 processor. Introduced in 1979, it was more powerful than the other 8-bit processors, and was the first home computer that could run position independent code. This then made it the first home computer that could run variants of UNIX. It used the entire set of chips Motorola made for the 6809, as well as the Motorola suggested circuits for serial and joystick ports.
6. Nintendo also used the entire set of 6809 chips and suggested circuits to make its arcade games and, in 1981, its home arcade games. Nintendo somehow assumed that putting its games in cartridges would keep people from copying them.
7. In the mid 1980s, someone figured out that the only difference between the Nintendo home game system and the Color Computer was the connector and pinout on their game/accessory ports. They created a simple adapter that plugged into the Color Computer accessory port and allowed a Nintendo game to be played on the Color Computer. They sold these adapters for about $10. They also sold adapters that worked with other 6809 computers.
8. People then discovered that they could use Flex or OS-9 and the adapter to copy the code out of the cartridge and save it on a disk. This was the copyright infringement.
9. Nintendo sued all of the other makers of 6809 computers for making them so that they could be used to copy Nintendo cartridges.
10. The judge, not understanding computers, but seeing only the copyright violations, ruled wrongly that all of the other computer makers using 6809 processors must modify their products so they cannot play or copy the Nintendo cartridges.

    The problem is that it can't be done the way the judge wanted it done. There is no way for the computer to know what contains the software it is running or who wrote it:

    • The computer CPU just sees software in its memory space. It has no way of knowing what the software is stored on (RAM or ROM), or who owns it. All it can see is a program.
    • The computer has no way to know that an adapter is installed. The memory looks just like memory from its own cartridges or a program that was loaded from a disk.
    • The software that came with the computer can't be used to test if the software is in a Nintendo cartridge, because the computer is not running that software. It is running the software in the cartridge.
    • Any software that tests to see if the cartridge is in its proper environment must be in the Nintendo cartridge, not in the computer. So Nintendo must supply any such software. But any such software could easily be defeated by a smart programmer or hardware expert.

    There was no way to keep people from copying files with the technology available in the 1980s.

11. Neither Tandy nor any of the other companies making 6809 computers did anything wrong. None of them intended to do anything wrong. Even the company that made the game adapter did not intend to do anything wrong.

    Yet all of them were penalized because others found ways to do wrong with their products.

    This was wrongdoing by the judge. The innocent must never be penalized.

12. Most of the companies wrongly chose to discontinue their computers.
13. Nintendo deprived many people of their computer systems, even though those people had no intent to copy video games. Those systems were no longer supported and the people had to change to MS-DOS.

    The page author lost all of the work he did in the 10 years he owned Color Computers. All of the computers have failed over the years. Nothing else can even read the files. He can no longer read the documents he made, run the programs he wrote, play the educational games he wrote, or look at the images he created.